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Temperament is a theme too little appreciated in reflecting aboutculture and politics. Although no temperament neatly supports any particularpolitical order, there are echoes, affinities, and latent hostilities betweenhabits of mind and political practices.

The Wired temperament is contemptuous of all limits -- —of law, community,morality, place, even embodiment. The magazine's ideal is the unboundedindividual who, when something looks good to him, will do it, buy it, invent it,or become it without delay. This temperament seeks comradeship only among itsperceived equals in self-invention and world making; rather than scorn the lessexalted, it is likely to forget their existence altogether. Boundlessindividualism, in which law, community, and every activity are radicallyvoluntary, is an adolescent doctrine, a fantasy shopping trip without end.

In contrast, liberal democracy at its best starts from a recognition ofcertain limitations that we all have in common. None of us is perfectly wise,good, or fit to rule over others. All of us need help sometimes, from neighborsand from institutions. We are bound by moral obligation to our fellow citizens.We share stewardship of an irreplaceable natural world. This eminently adulttemperament is alien to the digerati.

The choice of which temperament we will cultivate is timely, for it lies nearthe heart of our decisions about how to regard the ascendant, global,information-based economy. Will we see in it the latest set of temptations toour familiar maladies of greed, mutual indifference, and self-absorption, andwork to address those with the best resources of liberalism, privately andthrough our political institutions? Or will we pretend with Wired thatthose hazards and their accompanying obligations are finally behind us, that themillennium has come in a microchip?====

http://www.4literature.net/William_James/Pragmatism/22.html -----------------------William James, _Pragmatism_ (1907)Lecture 4, "The One and the Many"

. . .

The history of philosophy is to a great extentthat of a certain clash of human temperaments.Undignified as such a treatment may seem to someof my colleagues, I shall have to take accountof this clash and explain a good many of thedivergencies of philosophers by it. Of whatevertemperament a professional philosopher is, hetries, when philosophizing, to sink the factof his temperament. Temperament is no conventionallyrecognized reason, so he urges impersonalreasons only for his conclusions. Yet his temperamentreally gives him a stronger bias than any of hismore strictly objective premises. It loads theevidence for him one way or the other, making fora more sentimental or a more hard-hearted viewof the universe, just as this fact or thatprinciple would. He trusts his temperament. Wantinga universe that suits it, he believes in anyrepresentation of the universe that does suit it.He feels men of opposite temper to be out of keywith the world's character, and in his heartconsiders them incompetent and 'not in it,' inthe philosophic business, even though they mayfar excel him in dialectical ability. . .====

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_may_2014/on_political_books/the_origin_of_ideology049295.php-----------------The Origin of IdeologyAre left and right a feature (or bug) of evolution?

By Chris MooneyMarch/ April/ May 2014

. . .

[I]t is hard to deny that science is revealing a very inconvenient truthabout left and right: long before they become members of different parties,liberals and conservatives appear to start out as different people. . .====

When you combine key psychological traits with divergent streams ofinformation from the left and the right, you get a world where thereis no truth that we all agree upon. We wield different facts, andhold them close, because we truly experience things differently. . .====

The libertarian style of thinking can even verge, in extreme cases, on autism.

The University of Cambridge-based psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen, a leadingautism researcher, famously has shown that people with autism exhibit twocritical features: They test exceptionally low on empathizing scales andexceptionally high on systemizing ones. Empathizing governs socialrelationships — Are you able to relate to other people? — while systemizinggoverns understanding and analysis of the outside world. . .

Libertarians score very low on the empathizing scale and very high on thesystemizing scale. In other words, they are highly rational moral thinkers,less emotional than both conservatives and liberals. Two of the leading moralthinkers of Western history — utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and deontologistImmanuel Kant — were also incredibly gifted systemizers but deficient empathizers.Today, Bentham and arguably Kant would might be diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. . .====

It used to be that crazed and delusional people had to work togain an audience in our society. When I attended St. Mary’s Universityin San Antonio in the early 1980’s I recall going down to Alamosquare and listening to the various citizens who shouted in thefree speech area outside the historical shrine. Tourists,business men and women, and the general public passed by asthey would yell and sermonize about the evils of our society.

With the advent of the Internet these same individuals are nowable to expand to a wider audience. Gathering together theseminority groups may only consist of a few people but, withorganization, their message can easily spread and influencelarger groups.

The problem is that their message remains out of step with thelarger collective. The ugliness of politics has worsened under thepassive-aggressive and ego-driven personalities of these extremists.Individuals who functional poorly in our social environmentcan create disruption as they exhibit the fundamental flawsof their personality. . .====

[W]hen I asked Dr. [Martha] Stout if there's any truth to the contentionthat politicians are more likely to be psychopaths, she said in an emailthat no solid statistics were available to prove or disprove the hypothesis.Yet despite the lack of proof, she gave a surprisingly definitive answerto my question:

"Yes, politicians are more likely than people in the general populationto be sociopaths. I think you would find no expert in the field ofsociopathy/psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder who would dispute this...That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience wasand is a bitter pill for our society to swallow -- but it does explaina great many things, shamelessly deceitful political behavior being one."

At one time, she continued, the terms psychopath and sociopath conjuredup image of mass murderers and serial killers. "As it turns out, the majorityof sociopaths/psychopaths never kill anyone with their own hands, nordo they end up in prison," she said. "A smart sociopath can avoid prisonand find other, less conspicuous ways to satisfy his or her lust fordominating and controlling others, and what better way than throughpolitics and big business?" . . .====